A corn-processing plant on the edge of a Minnesota prairie town burps clouds of sweet, syrupy-smelling steam. A few blocks away, cream-colored Schwan’s trucks scurry out of an ice cream factory, set to deliver frozen treats in tree-lined neighborhoods. In between the two staples of this rural community, a blur of silhouettes race up the city’s highest point: an overpass spanning a set of railroad tracks.

Cross country runners are a familiar sight this time of year in Marshall, a typical, predominantly white, rural town in the windswept, southwest corner of the state. A closer look, however, reveals something quite different. Young Somali runners are now leading the pack.

In the late 1990s Somali immigrants trickled into town to work at Heartland Foods, a turkey processing plant with a reputation for hiring immigrant workers. The arrival of Somali families splashed pallid neighborhoods with color as women clad in vibrant dresses and head shawls, drew curious looks as they walked through the grocery store. Giggling Somali children ran barefoot through a city park as long-time residents kept their own children near. Marshall’s complexion was changing.

Among the first immigrants was Abdullahi Ahmed, a former Olympic marathoner with a wiry frame, who came with his wife, Jimo Adow, and six children in 1998. Like many Somali immigrants in the 1990s, Ahmed saw Minnesota—with an availability of jobs and a reputation for quality education and social services—as an opportunistic place to start a new life. By 2000, more than 11,000 Somalis called Minnesota home, the largest such population of any state.

Ahmed knew very little English, like many of the workers at the plant, but was determined to give his family a new life in a new country. Marshall promised this new life, an ocean away from the violence and famine that has killed roughly 400,000 since the early 1990s.

For Ahmed’s second youngest son, Amendnur "Akey" Jumale, the streets of Marshall were a far different scene from those of his hometown, the Somali capital of Mogadishu. "It was dangerous," Akey recalls. "Fifteen-year-olds carried guns."

The grassy plains of the Midwest were different from the sandy plains and coastline of the Horn of Africa in other ways for the then 9-year-old. Getting up at dawn and heading to school replaced mornings spent praying at the mosque, and evenings of homework took the place of twilight soccer games. Other than the company of his family, there were few familiar faces.

Akey enrolled in junior high school at a time when only a handful of Somali families were living in Marshall. As the new kid it was an intimidating experience. "I didn’t even speak English," says Akey, now 17. "They put me in a class of all white people speaking English. I was shaking."

Wade McKittrick, the high school principal during the last five years, says, "The first year that I was in Marshall it was very much a white school with very few spatters of color. The last three or four years I’ve seen it change from being a predominately white school to really starting to see other ethnic groups."

As the number of immigrants increased, so did racial tension in the region. In 1996 white teenagers in Rochester, MN, chased down a 12-year-old Somali boy with baseball bats and knocked out several of his teeth. A 64-year-old Somali man and 13-year-old Somali boy were also beaten in other racially motivated incidents. In 2002 vandals scrawled hate graffiti on buildings owned and used by the Somali community in the central Minnesota city of St. Cloud.

Around the same time in Marshall, a group of white students shouted racial slurs and threatened violence at Akey and a friend as they were driving. The two called police and went down to the station to file a report. While rumors of Somali and white students bringing guns to school circulated, the violence never materialized. Still, a sense of uneasiness hung in the air. "You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a Somali," remembers Mike Jacobs, the Marshall Tigers’ head cross country coach. "A lot of people were wondering, ‘What’s going on?’"

If Jacobs was curious, it wouldn’t take long to find out what the new immigrants would mean for his own life. Akey and his older brother Hussein ventured down to the art teacher’s room in the red-brick high school, ducking under mobiles and maneuvering around sculptures. They said they were interested in running distance. Jacobs eyed the brothers and saw they were built like ideal harriers with their long legs and slight frames. Later, when Jacobs learned of their father’s running prowess, he knew they not only looked like runners, but also had it in their blood.

Despite Ahmed’s extensive running career, the Jumale brothers were still rough around the edges, with ample talent but no experience running in a structured program. The duo’s erratic practice attendance was a challenge for Jacobs, a man easy-going enough to play Cat Stevens classics for his art students yet determined enough to run around town in the worst summer heat. Carefully balancing a laid-back attitude with high expectations, Jacobs started to convince the Jumales to believe in the team concept. And he had help.

Bart Johnson, a brown-haired sophomore, and Tom Allen, a freckled freshman, were the physical converse of their new teammates, but the pair quickly bonded with the Jumale brothers. Tom made wake-up calls to Akey and Hussein for Saturday morning practice, and Bart swung by the Jumales’ apartment to provide transportation. Akey spent so much time in Bart’s car he soon began to call it "our car." The relationship extended into the school halls and to weekend bonfires when the runners would hang out.

"They’re my friends, and I want to see them succeed," Bart says. "So, you have to do whatever you can to help them, whether it be waking them up for an early morning practice or giving them encouragement."

Succeed they did. The Tiger boys made their first-ever appearance at the State Cross Country Meet in 2001, finishing 11th.

When Hussein left Marshall the following year to live with another brother in Wisconsin, Akey quickly evolved into the team’s unofficial recruiter, bringing in neighbors and friends to run with Tom, Bart, and the rest of the group.

The number of immigrant runners continued to increase. Prior to the outdoor track season, Akey again ventured down to Jacobs’ art room, this time bringing Yahya Iman, a compactly built runner from Uganda. Three months later, in his first cross country meet, Yahya was the Tigers’ top finisher. Just a few meets later, at the prestigious Roy Griak Invitational in the Twin Cities, Yahya finished fifth out of more than 450 runners, covering 5K in 16:02.

Akey and the other Tiger runners started to push each other harder in practice, and the team once again found themselves at the state meet. This time, the Tigers finished only 10 points behind the state champion, Hopkins, a squad ranked in the top 10 nationally. Jacobs was named coach of the year by the Minnesota Cross Country Coaches Association.

Bart, Tom, and Jon Tauer, a blond-haired farmer’s son, were now familiar faces and mini-celebrities to many young Somali students who would say hello to them in the halls. Jon thinks his friendship with runners like the Jumale brothers has helped to break down some of the barriers separating the two cultures at school. Though there have been several small skirmishes, McKittrick credits the team’s close bonds for the comfortable environment at the high school.

"When the minority kids are involved in something and accepted by peers on the team, that starts to translate to the hallway," McKittrick says. "Akey Jumale is a great example. Akey is involved in the sports and he’s gone out of his way to be friends with some of the non-Somali teammates and the result has been tremendous acceptance in the school. Because he took that step, it’s a whole lot easier to get involved."

Many of the immigrant runners did feel involved in the community of the school and, with an atmosphere of cooperation in the hallways, the Tigers were able to focus on their goal of winning a state championship. Their work began at the track.

Practice attendance was no longer an issue in 2003, when the Tigers added intensity to their workouts. Joining them was a new teammate, Akey’s younger brother, Dahir Jumale. Dahir, a quiet ninth-grader, finished third overall in his first meet, trailing only Yahya and Tom.

For one practice, Jacobs dusts off a piece of large poster-board and hauls it down to the track. Akey, Yahya, and their teammates nervously toe the line for what promises to be endless sets of 300-meter repeats. With a patented "Yuuuup," Jacobs starts the group and jogs to the 300-meter mark, posterboard in hand. Runners round the last curve and glance nervously at their coach’s hands as he begins to raise the sign. One side reads "Finish Strong." But Jacobs flips the sign to reveal a caricature of himself with devilish features—complete with smoke shooting from nostrils. This side means an extra 100 meters.

Again, the boys performed well at the Griak Invitational, finishing third out of 47 teams and trailing only two out-of-state teams. Their top five runners clocked an average time of 16:32 on a hilly course, solidifying their standing as one of the state’s top teams. At the meet, Jacobs looked at his program and was surprised to see the Tigers ranked 18th nationally in the Harrier’s Nike/Foot Locker Super 25 rankings. But the Tiger’s performance wasn’t the only thing gaining attention.

Assistant coach Julie Keucker drew even more attention as she crisscrossed golf courses shouting words of encouragement to Akey and Dahir in Somali. The words she learned on the bus were part of an effort to embrace a new culture. It was an effort also shared by the runners’ families as the squad qualified for the 2003 state meet.

Tom’s mom, Julie Allen, planned to have one last pre-race meal before the state meet and thought it would be a good opportunity to try something different. She talked to Yahya and asked if his mother would make some of their traditional foods for the meal. Yahya’s mother, Mano Duxull, readily agreed.

"When I came to the door and introduced myself, oh, she was so excited to have me!" Allen recalls. "She showed me she was making bread."

The food was a hit with the team as the boys passed over the American cuisine Allen had prepared and dug into dishes that included goat meat. As the runners ate together, Allen observed the strong bonds that had converted team members into family members.

Two years earlier, Allen had gone with Tom to teammate Salah Mohamed’s wedding reception, a nightlong event that started at midnight. Allen remembers Tom seeing some friends and hopping out of the car to join them. Alone and feeling out of place, she sat nervously in her car.

"Pretty soon Hussein came and got me and said that I needed to come," Allen recalls. "He told me to come, and I said no, that I wouldn’t know anybody."

Then, a man approached her and asked her to come inside. "I said no and he said, ‘Yeah, you come with the mamas,’" she says with a laugh. Allen went inside to watch the women dance and chant and gained an appreciation for her Somali neighbors.

New cultures are also something Bart’s mom, Lois Johnson, has welcomed. Over the past several years, the Johnson family has hosted foreign exchange students from Colombia, Spain, Turkey, and other nations. They easily welcomed Yahya, Akey and Dahir into their extended family.

"I hope they realize that they play a very important role in this community and this school," Johnson says. "They are really to be admired because I cannot imagine what it would be like for one of our kids to go to their country and excel. And here they have come and given up everything, and they’re excelling. They’re living in this community and blossoming."

Beyond the runners’ families, the greater Marshall community has also embraced these new members. Tom recalls how the community rallied around the guys, particularly one unlikely group of supporters they encountered on a training run: "There was a crew fixing the road and these big construction guys were like ‘Go get ’em at state!’" he recalls. "The same day cars were honking their horns at us."

Following an all-school pep rally, the Tigers headed to the sprawling grounds of St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, for their third straight state meet.

Running with grit and determination, the Tiger runners charged out at the start and quickly established position at the front of the pack. Yahya again led the team as he stayed on the heels of Winona senior Garrett Heath, now running at Stanford. The two dueled all the way to the chute, with Yahya finishing just seconds behind Heath, the defending champion. With times of 15:12 and 15:17, both boys broke the 18-year-old state meet record of 15:18 and smashed the course record of 15:28, set in 2001.

Turning to see which runners would emerge over the hill next, the crowd saw a string of orange. Dahir (ninth), Akey (11th), Tom (12th), and Jon (44th) formed a finishing pack that left spectators speechless. The Tigers’ top five clocked an average time of 15:57 and exchanged hugs and high fives as they made their way to the gymnasium for the awards presentation. Somali and American parents cheered together as news of the final scores spread. The Tigers had achieved their dream: a state championship. Their nearest competitor finished 17 points behind.

Two coaches approached Jacobs and offered him their congratulations. "Both had the same comment," Jacobs says. "Not only did we win it, but we won it in a year in which the field was loaded with really good teams. One of the two said the team he had could’ve won the state championship any [other] time in the last 10 years."

"It was a dream season," Jacobs says.

Tom’s Irish heritage and Akey’s Somali roots led to a state championship, and the common ground they found while running created friendships that bridged surface differences.

"St. Patrick’s Day and Ramadan are now big holidays for the cross country team," Tom jokes.

Drew Geraets is a 2001 graduate of Marshall Senior High and now studies journalism and political science at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis when he’s not running along the Mississippi River.